A Year in the Life
by Alchemine
Summary: Batman wears the mask, but Bruce Wayne is the real disguise.


**Author's Note: **Originally written for Heatherly in the 2007 Yuletide Treasure exchange.

Spring is the season for weddings, and everyone wants Bruce at theirs, whether from ambition or greed, or in the case of some of the brides, to show him what he missed out on. He arrives fashionably late, strolling across the manicured lawn just in time for the kisses and champagne.

"Skip the boring parts of everything, that's my motto," he says, and everyone around him laughs.

At the reception, the children from the wedding party run wild, high on sugar and excitement, and pretty women in pastel dresses and pearls sidle up to him, smiling too brightly and talking too fast. _Bruce Wayne, such a catch_. One stumbles a little and spills her drink on the front of his jacket, and he smiles and lets her blot it with a napkin, knowing full well that the whole charade is only an excuse to get close to him. Perhaps, he thinks, he ought to go home with her for the night. He does have a reputation to uphold.

He leans close, whispers in her ear. "I don't know about you, but weddings give me hives. What do you say we get out of here and go for a drive? I brought one of my new cars."

"One of them?"

"Well, you know how it is when you find something you like ... you've got to get one in every color."

They cross the grass together, she slightly tipsy and holding onto his arm, he sober but hiding it. He won't hurt her; he never does that. Gold-digging isn't commendable, but it isn't a crime either.

Just as they reach the car, cold raindrops start to fall, darkening the graveled drive and pelting his head and shoulders. He thinks of the way the rain sounds against the surface of his cowl; a hard, taut drumming that fills his ears and separates him from the rest of the world, and suddenly he longs to be inside the suit, faceless, with no need to pretend. The idea stops him, frozen beside the car with his keys in his hand.

"Bruce, it's raining."

"I know," he says absently. "The streets will be wet."

"What's the matter? You're not scared to drive in the rain, are you?"

Her teasing voice snaps him back, and he laughs, opens the door and slides into the driver's seat. "Hardly. Do you want to see how fast it can go?"

"Of course I do!"

"Better hold on, then," he says.

---

When summer comes, he plays tennis and golf and croquet, wears white, visits his office rarely. He needs a vacation.

At the beginning of August, he tells everyone he knows that he's going to St. Tropez for the month, but he doesn't go at all. Instead, he dives deep into Gotham; hot, sticky, sullen, wicked Gotham, where people are out drinking on their stoops and fire escapes, sweating and stealing and fighting and killing while sirens wail in the distance. He loses himself in Gotham while Alfred fields his calls, looks after the house, and ensures that the right people receive postcards, complete with French postmarks, at appropriate intervals. The relief of giving in fully to his obsessions is almost too great to contain.

Over breakfast one morning, he flips to the society pages of the newspaper and sees his own face grinning back at him, above a caption that reads _Bruce Wayne Relaxes on the Mediterranean Coast._ There's a sun-drenched beach in the background. The graphic artist Alfred hired to do the picture has even Photoshopped in a subtle tan.

"Looks like I'm having a good time, eh, Alfred?"

Alfred makes a little _hrrrmph_ sound as he deftly tops off Bruce's coffee cup and brushes a few crumbs away from the crisp white tablecloth.

"_Are_ you having a good time, Master Bruce?"

Bruce takes another slice of toast from the basket and considers the question.

"Yes," he says. "I am."

---

It's autumn, and the year is dying, withering as fast as the leaves that lie in great drifts throughout the university grounds. They crackle under his shoes as he walks across campus with the provost, both of them swerving to dodge a group of students playing football.

"I do apologize for not being better prepared for your visit, Mr. Wayne." The provost is an old hand at politics, but even he sounds a bit flustered at this sudden appearance by Bruce Wayne, former dropout and current benefactor. "We weren't expecting you to come until the dedication next spring."

"Well, if the building's going to have my name on it, I want to be sure I approve of the way it's being built," says Bruce, poker-faced. He reflects, not for the first time, that you can get away with saying damned near anything when it's your checkbook paying the bills -- a fact he finds both sad and bitterly amusing.

The provost smiles a bit uncertainly and points out the next turn they need to take, his breath puffing white in the chilly air. Bruce eyes him -- smooth, grey-haired, dark-suited, probably someone's beloved grandfather -- and wonders just how far this man would go, or has gone, with enough money at stake. Would he lie? Definitely. Kill? Perhaps.

_Scratch the surface, and there's a criminal underneath_, he thinks. _Alleyways, boardrooms, it's all the same. _

_Everyone has a dark side. Everyone. Even me._

_Especially me._

---

"Put it there -- no, _there_," Alfred says in his most officious voice as the delivery crew backs and maneuvers the Christmas tree into the entrance hall. They get more outrageous every time, Bruce thinks, watching from the second-floor gallery.

Soon the tree will be dripping with baubles -- Alfred is thinking of doing a red theme this time -- and then it will be time for the party, the grand annual party when all the windows blaze with light and everyone who can possibly wrangle an invitation squeezes in so they can drop his name later on.

_"I went to Bruce Wayne's little Christmas affair last night."_

_"Did you really?"_

_"Oh, I go every year."_ With a casual wave of the hand, as if to convey that the speaker is all but the first person on Bruce Wayne's speed dial.

He'll dress to the nines that night and circulate among the guests, kissing women and clapping men on the back, gulping champagne, living it up. And when everyone has gone home, then, oh, then the lights will go dark and his real life will begin, the life he loves and hates, the life that occupies all his waking thoughts. Another year come and gone; another year of this strange, split existence.

Down below, the leader of the delivery crew shouts an order, and the tree rises with a great rustling of branches and a rush of pine essence that tingles at the back of his throat. Its top comes level with his face; he could reach out and touch it if he wanted to. While they tie and strap it into place, Alfred climbs the stairs to view it from Bruce's vantage point, arriving slightly out of breath.

"Goodness gracious, it's a big one," he says, regarding the tree with a critical eye. "I do believe they get bigger every year."

"They do," says Bruce. He stares straight ahead so Alfred won't see the look on his face. "Every year. It never ends."


End file.
